Analysis Of The Article 'Addicted To Distraction' By Tony Schwartz

We often encounter distractions all around in our daily lives. Our attention is divided between different tasks, which make it difficult to focus. The internet plays an important role in distracting individuals to focus the mind and sustain concentration. According to Nicholas Carr, “When we 're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking.”(Carr 224). The internet plays an important role in why it is difficult for individuals to focus the mind and sustain concentration. The internet has many distractions that can often lead us to multitasks and not fully focus on one task. For example, I have seemed students in class using their laptops not for education purposes but searching

The article titled “Does the Internet Make You Dumber?”, Nicholas Carr informs the readers that people tend to be constantly distracted and interrupted when they are online. This can cause people to turn into scattered and superficial thinkers. Firstly, the article mentions that people’s thought, people’s emotion, and people’s personalities influence their ability to maintain concentration. The Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, Eric Kandel said that people can understand a new piece of information thoroughly only when they pay much attention to it. Secondly, it says that constant distraction from the Internet causes people’s brain to not function efficiently. The brains are not able to forge the expansive neural connection that give depth

To begin, the internet is altering the human ability to concentrate for long periods of time. There are many distractions on the internet. Even if people are looking for something as small as a definition on the internet, all of the hyperlinks and ads can make people stray away from finding it. Many people begin to get fidgety and lose concentration after only a couple of pages. Nicholas Carr struggles with keeping his concentration by stating in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” that “ I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do” (Carr 731). A person could be checking the score of a football game when all of the sudden an email message appears and totally diffuses that persons attention away from the score of the game. Also, the human brain is beginning to adapt to receiving information quickly. Research that took days of searching through multiple books can now be done in only a few

Undeniably Carr is right in his notions of the internet being an easy distraction; multi-tasking and prioritising are learnt skills and

A few years ago if you would ask someone what the internet or as that matter what a computer was they’d either say that they don 't know or give a hazy account of it being something that people in the technology industry use. However, today you look to the left or to the right and there are swarms of people holding on to their smart phones or to their computers. Surfing the Internet has become a pastime as social and marketable as going to the movies. It has almost sort of become an “addiction”. There’s something different, and more complex, about Internet addiction as compared to any other addiction such as drugs. Unlike drug addiction it’s more difficult to pin down a computable, damaging effect of Internet use. However when compared with drug addiction, in Internet addiction you do not necessarily know the cause and what you might lose at the end. The World Wide Web has therefore started a revolution.

Americans’ over-dependence on the internet is causing more harm than good. Technological advancement, coupled with our easy access to virtual life through computers, cell phones, iPods among others has introduced us into a new era of extreme livelihood and lifestyle; we have gradually expanded internet use to do most of our walking and thinking for us. This growing trend in internet obsession if left unchanged will forever affect our emotional, physical and social wellbeing.

The internet is said to damage our brains because it doesn’t allow us to focus completely, but it is actually a major advantage we all have. Nicholas Carr, in What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, states, “Their heavy use has neurological consequences.” by this he means

Thousands of websites are distracting students from studying time. In an experiment at Cornell University, students who used internet-connected laptops during a lecture did much worse on a subsequent test than students who did not use the internet (Carr, 2010). It indicated that using the internet in class impacts students’ attention span (2010). Distractions can take attention away from learning. In fact, using the internet does not promote study efficiency, but wastes time.

Most individuals are unaware of the effects this easy internet access is having on them. Often more time is spent on the mobile devices than initially planned because when people finally part with their phones they experience depression and withdraws; habitual use of technology can lead to addiction (Rosen). Addiction commonly is defined as the condition of being addicted to a substance, thing, or activity. Rosen explains, “An "addict" must overuse the Internet, the cell phone, or other technological devices to be considered abnormal,” and can result in sleep loss, forming bad habits, and potentially skipping face-to-face social activities.

Karl Marx believed that technology was the driving force of society. Whether one agrees with this theory or not, this day and age is largely dependent on new technologies. At the base of today’s technology is the internet. With the creation of smart phones, laptops, and social media outlets, internet addiction is a term now being applied to those with problematic behaviors surrounding the excessive use of the internet. However, it is important to note that no standard diagnostic criteria or formal diagnoses are currently recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA) for internet addictions. This paper aims to explore the physiological and psychological effects of the internet on individuals; especially when it is used in excess. Potential treatment options are also discussed.

Users who spend too much time in cyberspace are typically fleeing problems with relationships or trying to address deep feelings of insecurity or loneliness…and as with other addictions, what at first seems like a pleasurable retreat from pain, gradually becomes a tyrant, interfering with work, family life and normal, healthy contact with other people (Macklin).

Addiction, defined by Webster dictionary as “a strong and harmful need to regularly have something (such as a drug) or do something (such as gamble)”. Everyone has one, we’re all guilty of being addicted. Certainly, as this world changes and evolves, we as people change and evolve with it. We invent, create, and mold materials to change this world for the better. Though sometimes, we can often become dependent on our own inventions to a point that it becomes unhealthy, afflicting, and seriously addictive. One of these innovations includes that of the internet. It’s a wonderful source of information, used to connect the world in ways we never thought possible. Even still, are we as a people missing the darker sides that

The results of the study done by Buchanan, J., O’Mara, J., Pistner, M., Young, K. were as follows; first, boredom was one of the factors identified by participant as being a major cause in dealing with their use of the internet.Secondly, symptoms of internet addiction found in this study were being engrossed with the internet, anxiety when not using internet, lying and covering up internet use, negative impacts on real-life functioning. The overuse of the internet can lead to depression or increased depression, social isolation, loss of job, financial debt, divorce, underachievement in school, and tension in relationship with family.

When people talk about addiction most minds go to opiates, cocaine, gambling, or possibly even sex. What people often don’t think of is internet addiction. There are several different ways to be addicted to the internet, by way of social media such as Facebook or Instagram, pornography, online gaming, online shopping, and even texting. The availability of the internet has changed over the years, from only being accessible on computers plugged into walls with slow dial up connection, to now smartphones with quick internet speeds that are carried around in our hands, purses, or pockets everywhere we go. Having this accessibility makes it easy for people to spend countless hours surfing the internet, texting, making purchases, or scrolling through social media. But doing this may be doing more harm than good. Being addicted to the internet may be causing issues in people’s everyday relationships, work, mental health, and even daily tasks.

Before, the internet made our lives more convenient, but now we have developed a potentially dangerous dependence for it. Years ago, before the internet, humans went about their daily life just fine. In just the half century since its inception, almost half of the world's population uses the internet. Since I began using the internet for my classes I have seen it as a great asset. However, one day when my internet failed to connect, I found out just how much I needed it for my classes. After several attempts to fix it, calling our family's internet